Welcome to the Starfall Online Universe! Although the game is only in a pre-Beta (ok, Alpha) state - there are a lot of things you would love to learn about it. So, here is a short guide telling about several main things you can do in Starfall Tactics:

Step 1 - Tutorials

When you start playing Starfall Online, the first thing you will do - is going through tutorial mission and context tips. Please, don't skip it as it carefully tells you about all the main things in the MMO mode and also give a reward - Repair Drone. Still, if you got troubles or already know everything about the game - you can disable it: open console (~) and type "ToggleSFTutorial" to switch it off.

Step 2 - What can I do here?

Once you finish tutorials, you wonder what shall I do? In Starfall Online, it's up to you to decide - however, to get further in the Galaxy you need to complete faction missions, mine resources, build new ships and kill pirates. And here is the short list of the most common things you can do after finishing Tutorials:

Play a Survival mode to get used to battles - it's available in the Main Menu through QUICK MATCH tab.

Choose an "easy" difficulty for a good start

Here you should protect your base from enemy ships.

You have a constant income of a resource, which you spend on warping in new ships and upgrading Control Points.

Warp in new ships by pushing TAB and choosing ships.

Capture Control Points and upgrade them - push on captured point and choose "Upgrade to"...

If you get tired of enemy waves, open text chat (Enter) and type "GG" to surrender.

Go back to the Galaxy Map - push "Deploy" button.

Join a House(guild) or create your own:

Right-clik on your Mothership and go to House registry menu

Type a name and a Tag to appear next to your name on the global map.

House members have their own chat, can build new bases and initiate attacks on enemy bases (can be not available in the current test version).

Great! Now you are a member of a serious organization.

Get quests

On each planet, repair station, inhabited planet and Black Market you can see yellow quest markers.

Dock with it

Go to the according tab and accept a quest

Now you can see a quest panel on the left and track its progress. Note: if you need to get something, you have to actually transfer all items to the quest NPC.

Once you finish this quest or get all required items - come back to the location where you received this quest and complete it.

Fight several pirates to get to the next level:

Go to systems which are not conquered by your faction - they have a different color or don't have color at all.

Explore systems and find pirate fleets

Right click on them to attack

Don't forget to take all the loot back to your Mothership!

If you get your ships destroyed

No worries - you can get them back - just come back to the shipyard and wait until they repair or do the following:

While on the star system map, push a recall button - the last one in your action bar.

If your ship has already repaired - just push a "Recall" button and don't move until it's done.

If your ships are under repair - you should spend some IGC to rush repairing. Total recall cost is written next to Recall button.

Hooray, you are ready to continue exploring the Galaxy!

If your ship gets a level up

You definitely won't miss it as it has a nice animation!

Go back to your shipyard

Open a ship which leveled up - notice it by flashing signs

Open ship mod tree, using an icon in the top middle of your screen, next to the wrench

Choose 1 modification - it gives you a certain small bonus. Keep in mind, that you need to invest several points into the first modification to get access to further modifications.

Push confirm button and save all changes for this ship.

On level 16 you will be able to unlock and choose an Alpha mod - a special module or a big bonus to characteristics. Note that ships don't get experience from completing quests - they need to actually participate in the battle.

Mine resources

Here you might have reached level 2 and unlocked the new detachment: go back to your shipyard, in the bottom middle of your screen choose a new detachment. Hmm. Looks like you need to create a frigate, right? But to do so, you need some resources which you can mine in Rich Asteroid Fields.

Make sure you have a Mining Module installed inside one of your ships - it's usually there by default.

Find Asteroid fields which are not just grey, but include glowing things - these are Rich Asteroid fields. You can check how much resources they contain by using Left Mouse Button.

Enter Rich Asteroid field using "Explore selected sector" button

Find some asteroids flying around and get close to them - mining module will automatically scan them and reveal resources

Activate mining module by pushing a hotkey or pushing its' icon and point to the asteroid to start mining.

Once cargo of all your ships becomes full - get outside of the rim of the map and return to the Shipyard.

Build a new ship and customize it

So, now you might have enough resources to build your first frigate.

Go to your Shipyard

Push "Build new ship" button

In the new menu, you can choose a frigate in the right list - usually it will be 4 first ships.

On the right you can see required components - craft them and then push "Build" and ship building menu.

Wait for construction to complete. Now you can open it by clicking on it.

Add some equipment you got while completing quests and killing pirates

Go to visual customization menu (top middle button near the wrench) and choose a custom color or skin - don't worry, all in-game purchases are free for now.

Craft and Disassembling

There are 3 types of items in Starfall Online - Defective, Normal and Improved.

Defective equipment can not be equipped to ships - instead, it can be disassembled. Well, all equipment can be disassembled, including Improved and Normal quality items. Disassembling gives you different parts of this equipment which can be used to craft Normal or Improved version of a disassembled item or other things: for example, there are parts which are used in any ballistic weapon crafting, parts for all energy weapon or only for antimatter equipment and etc.

When you disassemble defective items, you get some item experience and, with time, get a recipe of this item forever, saved in your crafting menu. For example, to learn how to craft Small Shields, you must disassemble 3 Defective Small Shields or 1 Normal Small Shield. So, while disassembling items, you learn to craft equipment and get components at the same time. However, Improved Equipment Projects can not be acquired this way and are still of a single use - you can only find it while traveling across the Galaxy.

To create an item from a project, come back to the Shipyard and find "Craft Equipment" button

Make sure you have enough rcomponents, PP and IGC to start crafting

Start crafting. Wait for it to complete and then Acquire an item.

Salvage

To craft items of another faction, like screechers weapons or Nebulords ships, you need their salvageable parts. When you destroy ships, you can see some salvageable parts dropping from it. To get them you need a Salvage module installed on your ship.

Get Salvage Module: Buy it on a black market (marked with a hat&glasses sign on a global map), get as a reward or drop from enemies.

Equip it to one of your ships

Once you destroy an enemy ship, you can fly close to ship wreckage and activate Salvage module - small drones will start collecting it for you.

Note: Salvage Module is always available in Black Markets, while other ways to get it are pretty random.

Get acces to new star systems:

By this time, you've probably got a huge "ACCESS DENIED" message and checked a context tip on warp gates. The matter is that to go deeper into space you need to complete faction quests.

Faction quest is always displayed on the top of your Quest Log

Faction quest rewards usually can be acquired on Motherships

Sometimes you can get special missions - find their markers on the global map.

Woohoo, you have to access to the next set of systems, in other words - Rings! Remember, that each next Ring requires other quests to be completed.

Quickly moving across the Galaxy and using Gates:

To quickly move across the Galaxy, you can find Gates and use a special function available on them, allowing to warp to another Gates or drop off cargo. Careful: it requires IGC (in-game currency).

Gather a party

You are now ready for some serious adventures. Ok, let's gather a party:

First of all, find a couple friends or allies and add them as friends using a special menu in the bottom right corner.

Using the same menu, invite them to a party.

Ok, you now get a serious party to fight with some serious guys. Remember, that party size is limited to 3 members at the moment.

Attack pirate base

Find a star system captured by pirates - it's painted in a pale red, blue or purple.

Go to this system and find the base. You won't miss it - it's a big structure.

Attack it using Right Mouse Button

Inside the base, there are many things to do: kill bosses, destroy support stations which can be found across the map and then finally destroy the base which is usually in the middle of the instance.

Remember that if you start killing the base before clearing all the bosses around it, they will come to defend it.

Go to the Ranked mode to get some fun in a quick pvp battle!

Go to the main menu and push "Switch to Ranked Mode" button: here you can construct a fleet using a special set of equipment, creat a custom lobby and play with your friend or find an opponent for a duel.
There are two Ranked modes available now: Mothership mode and Domination. In both modes you need to capture control points and upgrade them - just like in Survival matches or base capturing event. Check a "Play a Survival mode" section at the beginning of this guide for more info.

Note: Mothership mode requires to defend the base and destroy it, while Domination - only to capture Control Points.